The present invention is generally directed to the field of optical character recognition. More specifically, the present invention is directed to a optical character recognition system that identifies characters written in cursive script.
Cursive script recognition (CSR) is generally considered to be the next frontier in the field of optical character recognition. With the advancement of computing technologies, it is believed that CSR will facilitate vast improvements in providing easy to use computer interfaces by eliminating the necessity of a keyboard. The ability to enter data by writing in cursive script will open the use of computers to a wide variety of individuals which have never learned keyboard data entry skills.
CSR research has taken several approaches to the problem of recognizing cursive characters; including attempts at both individual character recognition and word recognition. The individual character recognition approach requires that a word be segmented into its individual character components prior to recognition and classification. Identification of appropriate character segmentation points, however, is extremely difficult in the case of cursive script. The word recognition approach has generally been limited to recognizing a very small number of words. Scaling of word recognition systems to recognize hundreds or thousands of words required in commercial applications is not presently feasible due to the resulting complexity and expense of such systems.
Conventional methods used to perform CSR recognition are also based on the extraction of features of the cursive characters or words. The extraction of features approach requires a great deal of custom algorithm development. Thus, modifying such a system to accommodate new character classes tends to be a very slow and tedious process.
In view of the above, it is an object of the invention to provide a method and apparatus for recognizing cursive script that does not require feature extraction or the task of separate segmentation of the word prior to recognition. In addition, it is an object of the invention to provide a CSR system that is flexible and can accommodate new character classes without requiring a redesign of the system.